The Center for India and South Asia (CISA) supports research, hosts public lectures and workshops, and collaborates with other institutions and centers to raise the profile of South Asia on campus and, more generally, in Southern California. Our goal is to transform UCLA into one of the leading poles of integrated research activity on India and South Asia in the country through research, collaboration and academic integration.

Research

• Our public colloquium series features UCLA faculty and distinguished scholars from around the globe, serving to introduce substantive coverage of new areas (for example, political economy, cinema and media studies, social anthropology, South Asian languages and literatures) that have so far been relatively neglected.
• Offered an event series with Program on Central Asia to increase exposure to central Asian research.

Collaboration

• Strive to introduce comparative studies and connective research in relation to other areas that are the focus of existing centers and programs at UCLA and in the community
• Past partnerships have included centers for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies, The Anderson School of Management, the Program on Central Asia and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Academic Integration

• The Center annually administers the prestigious Sardar Patel Award for the best dissertation submitted at any American university on the subject of modern India.
• Support and promote the hiring of South Asian scholars to the UCLA community.